Jake Baker: The High School Years
by Courtnerrr
Summary: Welcome to the life of Jacob William Baker. He eats, he sleeps, he goes to school. He does so much more than that though. Find out the full details inside.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Cheaper By The Dozen. Sadly…

**Author's Note:** Okay, I'm not abandoning my other stories, but I had the urge to do this one. And I'm not claiming that these ages are definite, this is just what I think. If anyone wants to correct me, go for it.

**Jake Baker: The High School Years  
**Chapter One

High school. They call it the "best years of our lives," but is it really? I mean… You've got all this drama, backstabbing, I guess if you're into that kind of thing then high school is awesome. I'm… not really into that. I've been hanging out with the same group of kids since I was thirteen, and we haven't had all that much drama, which is pretty sweet in my eyes.

Oh, yeah, you don't know me. Do you? I'm Jake. That's enough for now, I'll get into more details later. But if you hear someone talking about Jake in this school then it's usually me. If someone talks about the Jake with a lot of siblings, then it's more likely going to be me. But enough about me, I'm not all that interesting.

Well here we go, let's dive into my life.

I was sitting in the passenger seat of my older sister's car. Of course, I towered over her, but she honestly terrified me. Five years ago, my dad said she had a dark gift. And I will continue to believe that until she proves otherwise. We were driving towards our school, and in the backseat, we had one of our younger brothers. I watched the scenery pass by, well… It was a suburb, the majority of scenery was houses.

My sister, Sarah, was rambling about something… I'm going to be completely honest and say I wasn't listening. But a red light stopped that. I heard the rambling stop. And next, a hand was meeting my head and a loud smacking sound echoed. "Ow! That was my head."

She glared at me, "I'm aware. You weren't listening to me." I mentioned that she scared me, right? Because that was definitely coming into effect right now.

"But I can put the gist of it together…" I muttered. It was true, lately she'd been bitching about how Elliot was getting distant, and he hadn't been calling. They'd been a couple for… four years. Things weren't going to stay the same forever. Hell, I hadn't been too involved in dating and I knew that. But that wasn't even the reason I tuned out Sarah's Elliot rants. I tuned them out just because I hated hearing about him. He had been my friend first, and now me and him were distant too. It was pretty sweet, not going to lie.

"Shut up Jake." She muttered, before the light turned green and she started driving towards the school again. Sarah and I used to be really close, and we still were. It's just… people grow up, and people grow apart. Welcome to the world of Jake and Sarah right there. We fight a lot now. And based on the past week, I'm lucky I'm not walking right now.

We pulled up to the school, and Sarah went to her usual parking spot. I hopped out of the car and starting walking up to the school. Mark was shortly behind me. But I had people to see. I walked through the front doors, going to my locker, where I knew my friends would be waiting. "Yo Baker!"

I shook my head, walking up to the locker, "So how much have you had this morning?" I asked my best friend Cody. He smirked at me.

He shrugged slightly, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

My other friend, Matt, laughed slightly, "I think that's code for so much shit he lost track." The three of us had been the Three Musketeers since our eighth grade year. And I couldn't imagine going through the hell that was Evanston High without them. Cody, Matt, and I were pretty much inseparable. We did everything together. That sounds a little… bad. But I don't mean it like that. I'm talking about clean stuff.

Cody scoffed, "No. I don't do anything until noon. You should know that." He said, crossing his arms, and he was obviously annoyed. I'm sure you can figure out what we're talking about. If not? Well… we'll get into that later.

Matt sighed, "Open your locker Jake, I forgot your combo and I need my notebook. Cooney is going to kill me if I'm unprepared again." I shook my head laughing, but I opened my locker anyway. Matt dove in front of me, grabbing his notebook, "And now. I need to go."

I raised my eyebrow, "You've got like ten minutes dude."

Matt looked at me, "Dude, three words, I'm failing." That was something they had both picked up from me, it didn't bother me that they used it, I was kind of honored actually. As weird as that sounded.

I nodded, "Perfect sense. Go boost your English grade. Don't be one of those idiots that fails their own language."

Cody looked up, "I'm failing English…"

I raised an eyebrow, "Point proven." My friends were amazing, and we were close enough that we could insult each other as much as we wanted, and still be best friends. We were just that good.

Cody shrugged, "Whatever, I know I'm a moron." He said, looking at me, "I really don't want to go to first period."

"Tell me something I don't know." I said to him. Cody was a total idiot, there was no denying that. He never wanted to go to class. Except gym. And oddly enough math…

"Hmm. Give me a minute to think." He said, stroking his chin. This could take a while. Cody and thinking, as I've pointed out many times, didn't exactly go hand in hand. I could see the smoke beginning to come out of his ears. "THC is the most common chemical in marijuana?"

I couldn't help but laugh. "And you think I didn't know that?" I asked, shaking my head. A lot of people knew that, some for different reasons than others. My reasons… Well, we're not going to get into that yet. I barely know you.

Cody opened his mouth to say something, but he ended up bursting out laughing as well. I raised my eyebrow, but soon knew what he was laughing at. I had a bunch of weight on my back that hadn't been there earlier, "Hi Jake."

"Hey Tay," I said to the girl on my back, adjusting her so I could be comfortable and hold her at the same time. Taylor was a sophomore, she was in a couple of classes with my brother. And that was how I knew her. She was pretty sweet.

Cody scoffed, "Sorry to interrupt your little lovefest, but what am I? Chopped liver?"

I rolled my eyes, "No lovefest genius, just two friends. One friend on the other friend's back because she doesn't feel like standing."

"Interesting way of putting it Jake…" Taylor retorted, laughing slightly, "As awkward as that sounds though… It's true."

Cody rolled his eyes, "I'm going to start taking bets on when you two are going to go out." He said, "The sparks between you two are undeniable."

I shook my head as the bell rang, "Cody, just stop talking. Do the world a huge favor." After the bell, Taylor hopped off my back and we started walking to class. I had English.

**So tell me what you think. Be honest, I can take it.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Cheaper By The Dozen. Sadly…

**Jake Baker: The High School Years  
**Chapter Two

So after the warning bell went off, I was heading to English. I slid into the classroom behind some big beefy jock guy, and sat down at my desk next to Matt, "How was five minute tutoring?"

Matt looked at me, "Sucked. What do you expect?" He asked, rolling his eyes, "We ended up talking about Rush versus Pink Floyd, which was a better band and all that."

"No wonder you're failing…" I muttered, laughing slightly.

"Shut up." Matt muttered, flipping through his notebook. I looked over, there were random drawings of hillbillies, but not a lot of notes. We had been reading this nasty book… _Grapes of Wrath_. Let me just say… Not even the spark notes were interesting. Nothing against John Steinbeck, the rest of his stuff was good. At least… when I had the time to read, but this book was like… seven hundred thousand pages long. And in my house there is no way you're going to find time to focus to read a book like that.

Matt sighed, looking at me, "Dude… Did you read?" He asked. If only he had been in my head, he'd know the answer. I simply looked at him.

"Let's see," I said, looking over at Matt, "Read this really bad book… Or stop my eleven year old brother from going down the laundry chute…"

Matt raised an eyebrow, "Since when does Mike do that?"

I shrugged, "He's Mike. I gave up on getting inside his head a long time ago."

"Wouldn't he like… get stuck?" Matt asked, pretty intrigued by my family life.

"I'm not sure, I haven't measured my brother or the laundry chute lately."

"Ha. Ha. Very funny smartass." Matt said, shaking his head.

I smiled, "Hey, it's not my fault. You're the one who asked." I said, shrugging again as the second bell rang. That meant we had to be in class, and if we weren't, we were late.

A couple of kids skidded into the room at the last minute, but that wasn't important at all. At least… Not to me. I'm sure it was important to Mr. Cooney though. And just as expected, he started bitching at them. And I zoned out.

"_But Jake! Look at it! It's like… the perfect angle!" Mike exclaimed, opening the door to the laundry chute._

"_And you're an idiot!" I retorted, "Why don't you just come skate with me?"_

"_Because we do that all the time…" He said, leaning against the wall next to the laundry chute. "I want to try something new."_

"_Like when we first moved here and you bungee jumped off the roof?"_

"_That was fun!" He exclaimed, "And you endorsed that, but this is safer… There's clothes at the bottom."_

"_Yeah, the entire house's nasty underwear." I said, "I bet you'd love having your face buried in that…"_

_Mike looked up, "Wait… People actually use it for clothes?"_

_I looked at him, "You're kidding, right?"_

"_No…" Mike said, blinking, "Um… I'll go down feet first then!"_

_I smacked my forehead, shaking my head, "Mike… Seriously. You need lots of brains."_

_Mike scoffed, looking up at me, "But dude! Two words. That looks fun."_

"_Dude, three words, filthy clothes." I retorted. He wanted to throw my phrase at me, I'd throw it right back._

"_I can shower…"_

"_Seriously Mike… Go for it then."_

"_Really?" He asked, his eyes lighting up._

_And all of a sudden, our mom appeared, "Michael Andrew Baker, whatever you're thinking of doing, stop now." She said, looking at him._

_Mike looked at her, "It wasn't going to be dangerous!"_

"_Just disgusting…" I muttered under my breath._

_Mom raised her eyebrow at me, but didn't say anything, "Don't you have something productive to do Mike?" And she started rambling as I walked away. I didn't' feel like listening to her rant at Mike. But I could feel my little brother glaring daggers into my back. But oh well, I didn't feel like him getting buried in my clothes. Because minutes before he had shown up, I had just thrown my clothes down there…_

"Alright, now that people have learned the importance of being on time…" Cooney snapped me back into reality, and was glaring at the kids who had come in late, "Let's begin our lesson."

I sighed, my flashback had been so much more interesting than this. I put my head down on my desk, pretending to listen, but slowly zoning out. Again. This is what I was good at, not paying attention in class, telling a bunch of strangers about my school day. Hell, I'm actually amazed I've still got some people reading. But anyway, I think English needs to end… Now.

The dismissal bell rang, and Matt and I got up and left. (I'm good. Aren't I?)

And even though I'd only been at school for one period… I was ready for the day to end. But luckily, I had my second period study hall. I liked the schedules at my school. We had each class every other day, and we only had four classes a day. The only negative was that the classes were like eighty minutes long. But whatever. Less work actually, especially when I had study hall second period every day.

But that didn't mean I actually… did work in study hall. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. My study hall was loud. And I loved every moment of it. There was a group of us that sat in the back of the cafeteria, just goofing off. It was Tay, Cody, Sarah, myself, and a couple other kids. You'll meet them in a minute. But those are the four you should know at this point.

I was sitting in between Tay and Sarah, and we were playing paper football across the table. Cody and I were playing, everyone else was watching us and cheering on who they thought would win. I'm just going to come right out and tell the truth, the majority of the table was rooting for me. Because come on, Cody's small brain can't handle very much. And paper football takes thinking. Most of the time.

One kid, Bret, wasn't supposed to be in our study hall, but he was skipping class. He scared me more than Sarah did. Yes, it's possible, but he was one of Cody's friends. Which, I know what you're thinking, at least I think you do, but even though Cody, Matt and I were best friends, we had other friends. There's this amazing thing called branching out. And I recommend that everyone try it occasionally.

Because I do love Matt and Cody, they're like brothers I can get along with. But if they were the only people I hung out with… I can't even imagine it. We're the kind of friends where we love hanging out with each other, but too much of each other is like… death. It's just asking to murder our friendship. And I don't want that to happen now or ever.

The triangle football came towards me, Cody missed. Big surprise, all his spare time is certainly messing up his brain. I flicked the football back towards him, it went through. These are the things that come out of spending your spare time doing useful things. "Ha. What's that now? Six to four?"

"Shut up Baker," Bret said, rolling his eyes, "There's still a chance."

Sarah looked up, "He has a name…"

"I'm cool with being called Baker." I said, shrugging, I was weak. The two people that scared me the most were sitting at a table together, about to start arguing over me.

Sarah looked at me, "Well I'm not cool with you being called Baker. You have a name, and you should be acknowledged by it."

"Sarah, if you stop now, I'll listen to your Elliot rants." I said, dangling the idea in front of her, figuratively of course.

"You should listen to them anyway." She said, turning back to Bret.

Bret glared at her, he was a really pleasant guy. They glared at each other for a while, and I looked at Tay and Cody, "So… Let's cut the tension?"

And as if they actually agreed on something, Sarah and Bret both turned to me, "Shut up."

I winced, and Cody laughed slightly, but his mind was somewhere else. "Whoa! When did we get a soda machine?" Tay looked at Cody as if he were crazy.

"Okay… I knew there was something wrong with you, but are you kidding me?!" She asked him, shaking her head, "That's been there since before I came here."

I sighed, "Cody… You really need help. Lots of it."

Cody shrugged, "I know what I need." He said, standing, "But I can't get it in study hall."

**So not going to lie, I got most of my reviews while writing this. But thanks to all of you.  
Donny304; CBTDFAN; taynzpink;  
And please read my other stories. The one with the most reviews will be updated next.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Cheaper by the Dozen. But I own Jake's friends!

**Jake Baker: The High School Years  
**Chapter Three

Cody was walking out, and Taylor and I winced, running after him. "Cody!" Taylor jumped onto his back, "No." She said, clinging to him.

Cody raised an eyebrow, "Tay… Get off me." He said, obviously confused. But that was really nothing new. Cody was going to get himself in trouble, again, "Seriously… What is with you two?" He asked, trying to get Tay off of his back.

She glared at him, "Hmmm. I could name a few reasons." She said. And I winced, looking at them. Any minute now, we were going to get in some trouble. The principal was going to appear and ask why we weren't in class.

I looked at my best friend, "Seriously Cody, remember what happened the last time?" I asked, "You almost got busted."

Cody looked at me, "But I didn't." He said, crossing his arms. He looked at us, and he was trying to get Taylor off of his back, and it wasn't working so well.

"You don't understand Cody." Tay said, "You're going to get expelled if you get caught."

"Big if." Cody said, "I haven't gotten busted yet, so what's to say I will now?"

I rolled my eyes, dragging him back into the cafeteria, and then I pointed to the big fat security guard in the navy blue suit, "That says you will now."

Cody looked at me, "Would you chill Jake?" He asked, "I'm not going to get caught." Tay clung to his back, trying not to get off, no matter how much Cody was fighting her.

I rolled my eyes, "Fine Cody, just go get busted." I pulled Tay off of Cody's back, "I'm not going to take the wrap this time."

"What do you mean?" He asked, blinking slightly.

I shook my head, "Wait… You don't remember?"

"What am I supposed to be remembering?" He asked, tilting his head to the side.

"Last year." I said, "When we got in a fight because you got three days suspension."

"Why was that?"

"Of course you don't remember…" I said, shaking my head.

_It was eight months ago. March of our sophomore year. I was sitting in my biology class with Cody. We had a substitute teacher, and the school was in lockdown. Our class was buzzing with people talking. The bell had rung about five minutes ago, and the bell signaling the start of our next class had gone off too. But no one could go._

_If you stood at the doorway, you'd see a bunch of German Shepherds out in the hallways, barking and sniffing lockers. There had been rumors of drugs in the school, and the police officers had been called in. They were determined to find out who was smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine, or doing whatever other drugs existed in the school._

_The barking was beginning to fade, and suddenly, it stopped completely. A small dinging noise was heard from the PA system, "Excuse me, is Jacob Baker there?" I felt all the blood drain from my body._

_The teacher looked up, "Yes, he is."_

"_He needs to report to the main office immediately." And then she hung up. The entire class made that extremely annoying noise that people make when someone gets called to the office. And I wanted to punch them all in the face. I glared at Cody, and he winced, but then I walked out._

_The main office was right around the corner from the classroom. But it felt like it was fifty miles away. I walked into the office, my hands were clammy, and I was full of nerves. There were a few cops there, the dogs, the principal, and my guidance counselor. "You do know why you're here, right Jake?" My counselor, Mrs. Watters, asked. I shook my head._

_The principal, Mr. Stewart, glared at me, "Enough Mr. Baker," He said, crossing his arms, "We're not here to play games. This is a serious matter."_

_I blinked, so lost, "What is a serious matter?"_

_Mr. Stewart glared at me again, and the glare was even harder this time, "Officer Simmons, why don't we show Jake what we're talking about?"_

_Officer Simmons nodded, opening the door to the office, leading Mrs. Watters, Mr. Stewart, me, the other cops, and the dogs out. I bit my lip, and I was nervous. The group of us started walking down the hall, towards an area I knew far too well. My locker was in this hallway._

_The dogs started going crazy. And I paled, I knew what had just happened. Sharing my locker with my friends had been a bad idea. Mr. Stewart glared at me for a third time, "Open it Jake."_

_I winced, unlocking my locker, pulling up the handle. I opened the door. The dogs began sniffing further, and barking again. Officer Simmons began pulling out notebooks, binders, bookbags, a skateboard. And then a tiny plastic bag, with a green substance in it. "The dogs never lie." I knew exactly what it was and I knew exactly who it belonged to._

"_Do you know what this is Mr. Baker?" Mr. Stewart asked me, his arms crossed._

_I winced, looking up at the bag, "Oregano?" I was going to murder Cody. He was dead, he was so dead that he was going to wish he was really dying by the time I got my hands on him._

"_Very funny Mr. Baker." Mr. Stewart growled. You see, we had never really gotten along. I was a bit of a huge troublemaker, and even if I said it wasn't mine, he wouldn't believe me. He was always looking for an excuse to get me suspended, or expelled. So I just wasn't going to say a word. "I'll be calling your father immediately."_

_I bit my lip, running a hand through my hair._

"_What, you have nothing to say for yourself?" He asked._

_I knew that what I wanted to say would just get me in more trouble, but whatever. I was already dead, "It's not like you'll believe me anyway." I said, sticking my hands in my pockets._

_He glared at me, and I yelped, because he was dragging me back to his office._

"I don't know what you're talking about Jake." Cody said, crossing his arms as we sat down at an empty table.

"Of course you don't! You were too screwed up!" I exclaimed, shaking my head, "Plus I'm not done yet!"

He shook his head, clutching his head, "Can you hurry up then? And you know… get to the point?"

I sighed, "I could. But then you won't know what I went through because of you being an idiot."

**Thanks to…  
Donny304 ; TAYLORmichelle ;**  
**for reviewing.**


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